CABARET LIFE NYC: Boston's LYNDA D'AMOUR Deserves Move Love From the New York Cabaret Crowd

Cabaret Reviews and Commentary by Stephen Hanks

Given the insular and in-clubby world that is the New York cabaret scene (by nature, not by design), it can be a struggle for non-celebrity, out-of-town performers to generate an audience when they mount shows in Manhattan. One singer facing that dilemma is lovely, Boston-based Lynda D'Amour, a terrific talent who is popular in the Beantown area but hasn't built enough of a following in the Apple to pack a room. D'Amour has brought a show to Don't Tell Mama the last two Octobers, in 2011 with her delightful tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr, and last year with Ordinary Fool, which fell on the final night of the Cabaret Convention at Lincoln Center. In my review of the latter, I wrote that people would be foolish not to attend one of D'Amour's shows the next time she came to town.

Unfortunately, my words didn't have much of an impact since her crowd was again sparse on Sunday afternoon July 28 for the opening of her new show, The Hungry Years (she'll be making the commute again on August 11 and 25, both at 4pm at Don't Tell Mama), which is a shame because D'Amour possesses a strong vocal instrument that would rank her among this area's most accomplished female singers if only she was a New Yawker. With multi-award-winning Musical Director Barry Levitt at the piano, D'Amour entered wearing an elegant, bright red evening gown, and opened with a display of her Broadway belt combined with a lounge-singer smoothness on Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy's "I Want More." She then showed off her lush and sensual alto on Armando Manzanero's ballad--and one of Tony Bennett's many standards--"Yesterday I Heard the Rain," and proved she could deliver a powerful Blues sound on Nina Simone's "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl."

But after that very solid start, as the set moved along a few of the flaws in D'Amour's cabaret show presentation became apparent. Her show's scripts have always come across as a bit thin and meandering, as if what she really preferred doing was a cabaret "concert" and planning patter seemed a necessary, but unwelcome chore. Early in the show, D'Amour explained that the theme of The Hungry Years was songs inspired by the personal stories of her friends, presumably things in life for which they "hunger." She related a story about a young girl anxious to fall in love, a set up for an uptempo, jazzy mashup of Irving Berlin's "They Say It's Wonderful" (from Annie Get Your Gun) with Rodgers & Hammerstein's "I Have Dreamed" (from The King and I), which fell a bit short of being dreamy. After telling about an older female friend with a tendency to dress inappropriately for her age, she turned Amanda McBroom's sultry "Hot in Here," into something of a cougar anthem which minimized the subtle and seductive intensity of the song.

D'Amour was much stronger (with Levitt powerful on piano) on a bluesy arrangement of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "Imagine My Frustration," and after a story about overhearing and argument between married friends, she produced a beautifully evocative rendition--if a tad overacted--of Neil Sedaka's "Hungry Years." But by the time she got through solid versions of "Until You Come Back To Me" and "When Sunny Gets Blue" (inspired by a friend in her 80s who was dealing with the end of a late-in-life relationship), I wanted to hear D'Amour offer songs relating to what she hungers for (perhaps other than cabaret stardom and more fannies in the seats). On "Sunny," her eyes were closed for nearly the entire song, an internalization that keeps the audience a bit at bay. During her encore, a great vocal arrangement of a mashup of Lennon and McCartney's "Let It Be" with "Imagine," (a "hunger" for "peace and harmony in the universe") there were some vocal affectations (such as whispering lyrics a bit too often) that revealed D'Amour can get a bit too caught up in the sound of her own voice.

If Lynda D'Amour truly hungers for a New York audience to know and embrace her, she needs to convey more of her own emotional connection to her set, and to treat her show themes as more than an afterthought. That aside, D'Amour deserves some serious love because she is clearly an accomplished professional vocalist with a great range and powerful belt, who can also bring some nifty nuance to her delivery of classic songs and in a variety of styles. After three solid shows over the past two and a half years, it's time for the New York cabaret community to consider her a part of the in-club. -END-